Three weeks before the Christmas break Principal Wamp in an effort to
maintain a serious tone of instruction sent a notice to her staff. There were
to be no Christmas parties. Celebrations of any kind should be discouraged.
Teaching on a regular serious basis should continue right down to the last
day, which happened to be the day before Christmas Eve.
She needn’t have bothered. In happier times when the mood in the building
was less charged with uncertainty – the school closed a few more days before
Christmas to give everyone time to complete Christmas shopping – in those
happier days a more spontaneous festive mood was tolerated. Back then, the
secretaries explained, favorite teachers received Christmas cards; students
swapped tokens of friendship. One or two teachers might have sported a
Santa Claus hat; and the music department would surely have mounted a
Christmas Carol show in the auditorium for specially invited classes.
No such mood prevailed at John Wayne Cotter this year. Classroom attendance
was sparse; nobody felt much like teaching or learning. Mischief and vandalism
made duties difficult for the security staff who spent all morning chasing after
violators. Teachers and students could hardly wait for the bell at the end of
the day.
Radix came home, dropped his briefcase and wondered how the season would
pass. No traditional celebrations for him; no rushing about spending money on
gifts. Just a bone-dry waiting for the frenzy of consumption to pass. He would
try, however, to make every day count.
That evening he took a stroll to the barbershop. The cold wind, the grey skies
with no forecast of snow, set the stage for a Christmas in the Bronx that
would be little more than a fierce struggle to stay warm in cold buildings; be
cheerful, have much to eat and drink.
The barber, his two young apprentices and the customers were in seasonal
mood; the music was loud, the humor unrestrained, the conversation (about
domestic violence, police violence) served up with excitement. Young men,
talking fast, kept popping in with duffel bags offering watches, toys, cologne
at cut-rate price. The barber and the apprentices stopped what they were
doing to inspect the merchandise.
Back outside on the sidewalk, feeling stranger than ever with his fresh
haircut, dust and litter blowing up at his ankles, Radix sensed around him
some willed effort at merriness; at the same time a guarded edginess, the
kind of edginess that kept everyone moving on the sidewalk, stopping to
chat, but wary of popping interruptions, a half-forgotten slight that could
surface at any moment.
The following morning, still determined to make every day count, he decided
to make a trip to bookstores in Manhattan. He’d stopped in once at the
neighborhood public library. It was stocked with books which someone must
have deemed appropriate for the neighborhood’s income or reading levels –
popular romance, technical job-related books, a much-handled children book
section.
On the bus to the subway he looked out at the buildings and movement on
the sidewalks; at the vacant lots; that woman at the corner, thin legs twisting
on heels, sad-looking eyes in a bony face hoping to arouse desire; at the
next corner where young and old men waited outside the Deli, jobless, with
quick darting eyes; a young woman in straight-ahead hurry, a child quick-
stepping to keep up.
Over there more people idling; and now another vacant lot across which
sheets of newspaper rolled, came to rest, then picked up again, sheet after
once folded sheet dispersing; unpainted signs over those shops, sagging
awnings. A cold, hellish place – so it would strike anyone moving away from
it, looking out from a bus; leaving it behind, if only for a short time.
(from “Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!”, a novel by N.D. Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 